


Selkies and Shamrock Tattoos

by cosplayermadness



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, F/M, Implied Bisexual Dean, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, LDS Mention, mention of fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 09:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10919406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosplayermadness/pseuds/cosplayermadness
Summary: "If- if it's not her, then what- where?”“I don't know know Suz. But all I know is this isn't Eileen.”--In which Eileen's other hunter friends save the Winchesters' asses and help them find and save Eileen after 12x21





	Selkies and Shamrock Tattoos

“Dianna!” A woman’s voice gasped as she saw the thing on the table before them, bloody and badly slashed to bits. 

“No. No no no. That's- that's not her. It can't be her.” Dianna gripped at her sister's arm, shaking her head curtly as the medical examiner stood next to the body of their friend. 

“I'll- I'll give you a few minutes.” The medical examiner walked into his office to the back of the morgue and closed the door to the two women for privacy. 

“Dianna-”

“No. It's not her. Look” she pulled up the sheet from the feet up showing off bare, pale ankles tinged blue from the cold of the freezer. “Where's her tattoo, huh? The matching ones we got at Mardi Gras six years back? It's not there. This. Isn't. Her!” Her hushed whispered voice sent a chill down Suzie’s spine, and the brick in her stomach felt heavier. 

“If- if it's not her, then what- where?”

“I don't know know Suz. But all I know is this isn't Eileen.”

\---------------------------------------------------

Darkness. An all consuming darkness and dampness that she felt through her jeans and straight into her bone. It enveloped her like a straightjacket, unable to move and barely able to breathe. She tried squinting and closing her eyes several times, willing herself back to sleep but without any avail. She thought at first she was suffering from one of her sleep paralysis night terrors, but never had she smelt such awful rotting flesh like this in her life, and so she assumed the worst. 

She struggled against her wet restraints but could barely wiggle her toes before puffing hard from exertion. Where am I? 

\----------------------------------------------

 

Susie found them a diner with wifi not far from the morgue and as soon as they sat down, Dianna whipped out her laptop and booted it up. 

“There's no way she's caught alone in a forest like that, no way. She's been trained by one of the greats and she's more seasoned than both of us combined. Whatever happened in there had to have been planned.”

“By who? Who would get a shifter in the woods, convince them to take her shape, get a hellhound, train it to take down a shifter, and have the body remain intact enough to fool medical examiners and us? No one would go to that length, no one could do that-”

“Except the British Men of Letters?” Dianna looked over at her sister grimly, and by the look on her face, Susie was starting to think the same. “They wiped out that entire vampire nest, and they killed the alpha vamp. There's a reason Dave and Alison hadn't heard of a single monster attack in Oxford for decades. They're ruthless. I wouldn't be surprised if they took out Jack the Ripper himself, though I wish they'd done it sooner.”

Susie brought her hands to her face, trying desperately to rub out the image of Eileen on the slab and the thought of seeing her sister there next. Dianna was a good hunter, an ex-soldier for the US army and could hold her own in a fight. But that didn't ease the worry that these new players on the scene had systematically wiped out monsters and hunters alike as if they were an anthill in a suburban backyard. She tried to tell herself that things were easier when they were younger, but they never had an easy life. It seemed, if these British assholes had their way of it, they'd never have an easy anything again. 

“So what else could it be?” 

“Well, we can rule out shifter since the silver ring on your finger didn't do jack when you touched her. It's not a kitsune, werewolf or vamp. No way it's a wax sculpture either, which would have been pretty insane anyways.” Dianna clicked through several more links as their waitress came to take their orders. Susie ordered for them as Dianna read to herself, going through each possibility like a checklist, ticking each one off as either yes or no, hoping to make heads or tails of what they saw. It wasn't until their check came that Dianna slid the laptop towards her sister. 

“Selkies? But they don't shape shift into their people.”

“Actually the lore says they shift into an appealing and attractive woman, shedding their seal skin to better blend in with their surroundings. They're not malicious and they often fall in love with humans. Maybe whoever was hunting Eileen happened upon a selkie trying to please them and ended up getting killed. She probably thought the British SOB was stalking Eileen out of love and tried to replicate the look or something.”

“I mean, I guess it makes sense? But then where’s Eileen? Do you think a band of selkies have her?”

“No, they wouldn't capture a human like that. But I can't find any other explanation for this. Even if Eileen got her tat lazered off, once the body starts to decompose, you can see some pigment rise up to the surface. I asked the ME about it and he said that you could actually microwave the skin and a faint shadow of the former tattoo would show up, and-”

“Okay, ew. Enough” Susie held her hands up, face screwed in a disgusted twist. “I've seen a lot of crap but I don't want to add microwaved flesh to that list anymore than I want to ever smell it.”

“Fair enough.” They slid from their booth and headed to the parking lot, seeing a familiar old Chevy pull into the parking spot three cars down from theirs. “Does that car look familiar to you? The black ‘60-something sleek muscle car over there?”

“No, should it?”

Dianna played with her keys a moment outside their truck, staring at the two men getting out from the beast and decided that it didn't matter. She unlocked the door and hoped that wherever Eileen was right now, that she was safe. 

 

\---------------------------------------------------

Dirty water dripped on her forehead from somewhere above her. It was cold and consistent, and as she lay there she imagined being outside in the rain on her sixteen birthday. Lilian had just been taken off of life support and as she walked out of the hospital to take a breath, rain started to fall. The sun was still shining then, and as the rainfall came down harder, a rainbow appeared above the park across from the hospital. She stood in that rain, eyes closed for so long, she couldn't tell which water droplet running down her face was a tear or the rain. Thinking about that day left a bitter taste in her mouth, reminding her that as much as she fought to protect the ones she cared for, some things she could never save them from. 

It took a few moments to realize that the water dripping onto her wasn't the only moisture as hot tears rolled down her cheeks and into her ears. She hoped that right now she was alone because she couldn't bear to have anyone see her laying there, bound and crying like a wounded animal. She gulped in air desperately and tried to steady herself. She fought once more against her bindings but only managed to wigngle herself along the ground anoint an inch to the left before she ran out of breath. At least I'm not being dripped on. 

 

\-----------------------------------------------

Six days. SIX DAYS and not a single lead as to where Eileen might be. They searched everywhere and asked any hunter they could about selkies and where one might be hiding but each one came up empty. What was worse was that now they heard that the British had managed to kill another three hunters in the meantime. Dianna was getting increasingly agitated and no amount of trashy reality tv or ice cream could calm her down. Susie was starting to suspect Dianna would start drinking again if they didn't leave their trailer soon and kill something. Which is why Susie found them a nest of vamps just a few towns over. Neither of them said aloud what the other was thinking as they sped down the highway in the truck, trailer bumping along behind them. 

It took them about four seconds to realize something wasn't right when they pulled up to the warehouse they had tracked down the vamps to. For one thing, a few lights were on. And the most glaring thing was the sleek muscle car parked haphazardly along the side of it. The exact same car that they had in fact seen six days ago in the diner parking lot. 

Without a single word, they jumped from the cab, Dianna with a machete, a crossbow in Susie’s right arm, and a jar of dead man’s blood in her left. They ran to the open door and found two men, one on the floor crumpled like a sheet of paper and one being held up against the wall by two vamps. Neither of had time to register the bodies on the ground before a vamp leapt at them from the side. Dianna swung at him and decapitated the sucker in one hard swoop. 

Susie started loading her crossbow with stakes and one by one she hit the vamps who held up the man in their backs, dead man’s blood weakening them and startling them enough into dropping him. He slid down the wall, a patch of blood smearing behind him as he went to the floor. Dianna didn't miss a beat as she ran at them full force and cut into them. They fell to the ground with a wet thud, one half on top of the other, Dianna covered in a spray of blood. 

“Hey” she crouched by the man leaving against the wall, fighting for consciousness, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “How many of them total? Come one buddy, stay with me.”

“Six.” The man whispered gruffly and he winced painfully. Susie counted out loud a total of six headless vamps as Dianna checked the man over for injuries. 

“Go check the other one,” Dianna ripped off a piece of the man’s flannel to stop the bleeding on his shoulder as he started to slip under. “Stay with me man, you gotta stay awake. You might have a concussion. Look at me. Hey! Look at me!”

Susie had thrown her weapon down on top of a vampire corpse and bolted over to the other man on the concrete a few feet away. His long hair obscured most of his face and when she pushed it back she noticed a split lip and a sizeable gash on his cheek. She did a quick once over but found no life threatening injuries save for a broken pinky finger and a great deal of bruising. Either way, she wanted to get both men in an MRI as soon as possible to rule out brain bleeding. 

“S-Sa-am!” He cried weakly. Susie locked eyes with her sister and suddenly it clicked into place. ‘60’s muscle car, tall as hell, hunting monsters, one named Sam- 

“Winchesters.” Dianna couldn't believe she was crouching in front of Dean Winchester with her hand on his shoulder putting pressure as he started to lose consciousness in an abandoned cannery warehouse in the middle of nowhere. “Aaawwww shit Dean. Don't pass out, hey, hey! Come on!” 

“We can't take them to the hospital. They'll get thrown in jail again, they'll run their fingerprints and find out they threatened the president and then we'll be stuck in jail for conspiring with known felons and I'll lose my job-”

“Shut up Sue! We gotta get them the hell out of here and stitched up first and then we have to burn these bodies and hide the evidence and then we can freak out, okay?”

Susie nodded slowly, shutting her mouth tightly. Lifting these men was not going to be easy. 

 

\--------------------------------------------------

 

Eileen was awoken by a jerky motion pulling her upright for the first time in days. She blinked hard trying to see who or what was there but it's was still too dark to make anything out. She still yelled and tried to get help but that only earned her a wet slap to the face. 

“How low do you have to be to capture a deaf woman and hide her underground” she said, hoping she was yelling into her captor’s ear. 

A match was lit and she winced at the pain from the light suddenly filling the room. A second later a candle caught the flame and she felt her heart racing as she took in the view around her. It wasn't a room but a cave, rather small for a cave but still too big for her to try and make a run for it. A rickety old wooden table stood to her left with a bunch of junk strewn across it and right in front of her, behind a set of rusty bars was a woman holding the candle. She walked through the bars as if they didn't exist and came closer to Eileen so she could read her lips as she spoke. 

“I am rather ashamed I didn't know you were deaf, otherwise we wouldn't have kept you in this manner. You see, we're hunting some very bad people and we saw one of them hunting you. We thought maybe you could answer our questions but as you weren't responding to us, we decided to try other methods of extracting information. Clearly, that didn't work.”

“Who? Who are you? Who are you hunting?” 

“We aren't your concern. We're simply hunting those who hunted us for centuries. They all but wiped out our Irish and Scottish sisters and now they're trying to finish the genocide here. We’re not after you, we only seek justice.”

“The British Men of Letters” Eileen should have known. Ever since she shot that man when aiming at Dagon, she knew they would be coming after her, suspected as much when she was in Ireland. She should have noticed the tails on her that day but she was so excited to sleep in a real bed after dealing with insomnia for days on end she must have had her guard down. 

“Yes. Why are they hunting you?” The woman asked, leaning closer towards her, skin glistening as if she had sweated profusely and rolled around in cheap dollar store glitter before covering herself in resin. 

“How about you let me sit down in a chair and I tell you?”

 

\--------------------------------------------------

 

Dean had an awful taste in his mouth, like blood and vomit and that gas station sandwich he ate back in tenth grade all rolled into one. His head hurt like a bitch too, and as his eyes opened, he bolted upright, earning him a splitting pain in his shoulder and banging his head into a low ceiling. 

“Careful” a woman sitting in a foldable chair with a book in her hands warned. “You probably have a concussion and you don't want to pull out the stitches in your shoulder.” Dean reached for his knife but came up empty handed. “Sorry, had to take your weapons from you until you both were awake. Didn't want you stabbing or shooting us as you wobbled out of here.”

Dean looked around as to where exactly here was, and realized they were in a travel trailer. It was outdated to say the very least, the back hidden with a wooden folding door and a small kitchen across from where he sat on what must have been this woman’s bed. The colours were mostly browns and puke yellows but the fridge was covered in photos and magnets and there were several retro styled signs hanging about with quirky sayings, making it feel homey. One sign above the door read “it spring! I'm so excited I wet my plants!” and Dean wondered if this woman would murder him with it if given the chance. 

“Here.” She put down the book she was reading and got up to get a water bottle from the fridge, and a bottle of ibuprofen from the counter. “Take some, it's a new bottle, so you can keep it. Hungry?” He nodded regretting the action immediately. She grabbed something and popped it in the microwave before sitting down on the bed next to him. “Come here.”

“Woah! Not to sound ungrateful or anything but I'm not exactly in the mood right now lady.”

She scoffed, and took out a small flashlight from her pocket. “Don't flatter yourself buddy, I have to check your eyes to make sure you're not haemorrhaging from them. And besides, I'm not I. The market for a hunter who can't hold his own in a fight.” 

Dean would have protested at that, said he wasn't exactly on his A-game at the moment but she had a strong grip on his chin and dragged him forward. She shone the light in each eye, checked his shoulder stitches, and changed his gauze so quickly he barely even remembered that she was a stranger who just manhandled him like a stuffed animal. “Who are you?” 

“Dianna Davis. My sister Susan is with your brother getting groceries right now. We found you at the warehouse last night with that group of vamps. You know, if you're gonna crash a girl’s hunt, you really should call to let her know first.” 

“You're hunters then.” He righted his shirt over his shoulder after she fixed his bandages. 

“Yup.” She popped the p loudly as she sat back into her camp chair. “Didn't know I was going to have to come to the aid of a couple of legends this week or I would have cleaned up more.” She shot him a cocky grin he had given far too many times himself. She was short, and a little thicker round the middle but she looked strong. Her hair was kept short in a dirty blond pixie cut, and she was still wearing her AC/DC pyjamas. She didn't look much like a hunter, but over the past few years, Dean’s definition of a hunter had changed drastically. 

“So… where are we?” 

“About three hours south of Fort Collins. We tried driving as far as we could away from the nest after we stitched you up and burned the bodies. It was much easier lifting the corpses than lifting either of you two giants. No one has the right to be that tall buddy.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah well, what can I say? I've never met a hunter shorter than five feet before.”

“I'll have you know I'm a solid five foot three, thank you very much, and I-” she was cut off but the door being unlocked and a slightly taller, slightly younger woman walked in with Sam behind her. “Hey. Did you get the peanut butter?”

“Yeah. But I swear to god Di, if I find celery pieces in this jar I'm going to superglue all your underwear together into a giant clusterfuck.” Her black hair was much longer than her sister's, plaited in a long braid swishing behind her as she walked. She held up a grocery bag to Dianna, before moving to sit next to Dean. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh.. like shit mostly.”

“Hmmmm…. did you check his-”

“Yup.” Dianna answered as she opened the bag.

“And his-”

“Yes! I changed the gauze and checked him for concussion symptoms not five minutes before you walked in. Which is when he woke up by the way. And I have him The ibuprofen to take and he took two pills with the water from the bottle he’s holding.”

“Okay! Well, I just like being thorough. Hi, I'm Susan, but call me Susie or Sue. I guess you already figured out that we're the reason you're still alive, and as much as I wanted to get you to the ER for an MRI, I think we all know why I couldn't risk that. So,” she clapped her hands cheerily. “I'm glad you're still alive and I don't see any immediate brain bleeding or loss of motor functioning so I think it's safe to say we can take you on home and-”

“No.”

“Mmmmm, what?”

“No,” Sam said, slowly sitting down on the couch that he clearly slept on the night before. Dean would laugh at how old and pink the thing was if it weren't for their current situation. “We can't. The British Men of Letters tried to kill us there and we can't go back. They probably already know we got out and they're hunting is right now. We have to get you two as far away from us as possible. You aren't safe near us.”

“Yeeeeaaaah….” Dianna drew out. “Not a chance babe. You know, you guys stopping the apocalypse was one hell of a win for us all, and that probably means we owe you dinner, but you two little shits didn't stop there. Oh no. You two had to go and break open the gates of hell, deal with a bunch of Leviathan, stopped the damn darkness, and if what I hear is true, you,” she pointed a finger at Sam “ literally had two angels piloting your meat suit at one point or another, one of which was an archangel. And you,” she rounded on Dean. “Escaped both hell, and purgatory, and you guys basically decide for yourselves every single time shit hits the fan that ‘you know what we haven't done in a while? Sacrificed our own lives for about 8 billion people! Let's ditch movie night and do that instead!’ I’m not letting either one of you two little shits out of my sight till I know you're not going to run headfirst into your inevitable death the next chance you get. Go it?”

Both men look at each other with eyebrows raised and then to angry woman in the middle of the trailer. “And why would we listen to you?” Dean challenged. 

“Because I did two tours in Afghanistan, and I would have done more if an IUD didn't throw more shrapnel in me than Tony Stark. Hunting for me isn't a job boys, it's a hobby.” She crossed her arms against her chest, lip curling in distaste at the two of them. 

“Okay. Sounds good to me.” Sam moved past her carefully to put away a carton of ice cream into the freezer. She stared down at Dean until he too yielded to her gaze and grumbled acceptance. Sam suddenly gasped as he closed the freezer door. 

“What?” Dean watched his brother carefully as he pulled down a photo off the fridge carefully and showed it to his brother. There, smiling in a crowd with Dianna and Susie was another woman with dark brown hair, all three of them squished close together as a fourth woman held a camera clearly in selfie mode with a parade in the background. The fourth woman, smile big and bright, looking a few years younger and having a good time was Eileen. 

\----------------------------------------------

This was her life now. Every day - or so she assumed so as she couldn't tell time down here - two women would come down to her cell, light a candle, and ask her questions. One woman was the leader of the two, the shiny glittery one from before, and a shorter woman, far older with light hair and a three piece pant suit in some hideous pattern Eileen couldn't decider. After the questioning, they would give her food, mostly stale bread and limp lettuce, and a dry blanket. She could move about the cell now, but the table had been cleared of its junk to serve as her bed so she had nothing to occupy herself with but her thoughts. 

She kept imagining what the Winchesters would be doing right now. She wondered if Sam had gotten through the last season of the show she recommended him. She wanted to dish about the cliffhanger with him and maybe split a pizza between the two of them. She really missed cheese. And Sam. Dean too, of course but Sam a little more lately. He was learning sign faster and they almost managed an entire conversation last time via video chat without lip reading. He was clearly sweet on her and she was smitten herself. But hunters don't date. The saying Lilian drilled into her time and time again. That's why it was just the two of them. Lilian refused to risk either of their lives over a man who could get killed or worse, be used as bait to get to them. 

But she was in a cave, in a cell, trapped but some type of shifter people that she'd never seen up close before and she could very well be dead right now. If she got out of here, she was going on a date with that mountain man and enjoy some peace for once. 

 

\------------------------------------------

“How do you know Eileen?” Sam’s voice dropped an octave, stern with an undercurrent of threatening. 

“We met in Ireland ten years ago. We went there to lay our mother's ashes, as her final wish. Mom used to say that there was magic in the hills, but she was schizophrenic and thought the angels were talking to her so I never took much stock in that.” Dianna sighed. “We ran into Eileen when the inn we were staying at ended up being haunted. Well it was already haunted but it's not like we were calling ahead days after mom died to see which inns were haunted.” 

“That's when you started hunting?” Dean asked. 

Susie laughed dryly. “No. Dianna was ten, I was five. Mom’s schizophrenia was starting to get pretty bad then and she wandered out of the house to the cemetery. Dad took us to look for her a couple hours later and we saw her about to used as a human sacrifice by a bunch of suburban housewives trying to summon a demon. Mom was convinced that this is what we were meant to do, and she'd keep escaping until dad finally decided to take her up on it and we started hunting.

“She- she seemed better after a while too. But when dad died-” Susie closed her eyes, fighting hard to not cry. 

“After he died we put her in a mental institution. I was 18 so I joined the army and Sue stayed with our aunts till she finished high school. After I got injured and was shipped back home, we couldn't afford the home anymore so we took her back hunting. She died during a schizophrenic episode during a hunt and ended up shooting… me. And then herself.” 

“Eileen got us through it. She's been our friend ever since.”

“Was.” Sam choked out. “She- she's-”

“No. She's not.” Dianna snatched the photo out of Dean’s hand and stuck it back onto the fridge. “That wasn't her. I know it looked a hell of lot like her, but it wasn't her. It didn't have her tattoo.”

“Her what?” Both men looked confused and Sam held a hand up, saying “what tattoo?” 

“Oh. So she wasn't kidding when she said you never- her tattoo! We all got matching tattoos when we went to Mardi Gras five years ago, when this” Dianna hit the photo with a light smack “was taken. We got drunk and all got a shamrock on our ankles to mark the occasion. It was in hindsight, a stupid tattoo design but that selkie back there sure as shit didn't have one and I know that there's no way Eileen could afford laser ink removal.”

“What do you mean we never-” Sam started. 

“You guys have shamrock tattoos?!” Dean interjected, clearly holding back laughter. 

“Yeah.” Both sisters replied, pulling up their left pant legs to show identical shamrock tattoos on their ankles to the guys. Susie bent down to pull at the drawer under the bed Dean was still sitting on and pulled out a photo album. Flipping through it quickly she showed them a page of photos. One was the same group shot of the four women that was on the fridge, another was of Eileen in the tattoo chair, grimacing and holding Susie’s hand. The third and fourth pictures were of Dianna and the fourth woman they have yet identified standing next to the parade dancing in the street, and in the fourth, their backs were turned from the camera and they had their hands outstretched above them as beads were thrown from floats. Sam sat next to his brother and thumbed the page to see Eileen and the woman all with their ankles in a circle, showing off their tattoos and another of Eileen in a cafe, holding up a benign and a thumbs up. 

“We went there for a hunt with Eileen and when we realized it was actually just a bunch teenagers messing around with local police, we stayed a few days. We got drunk, got tattoos and ate way too much. It's the best vacation we ever had. But it sure as shit isn't the last one.” 

 

\----------------------------------------------------

“Please let me out!” Eileen begged the glittery woman, who she had found out was named Laoghaire just the day before. “Please Laoghaire! My friends are wondering where I am! I've answered all your questions!” 

Laoghaire didn't say a word as she handed her a basket of bread. She walked off, leaving the candle on the table still lit. 

\--------------------------------------------------

 

“They couldn't have gotten far. Selkies tend to stay in saltwater areas but these ones seem desperate. I don't think they're looking for love or companionship,” Dianna’s hands gripped the wheel as she drove back to the warehouse, hoping the Winchester’s car was still parked there. “They had to know she'd come from Ireland here, but why?” 

“She sent us a letter. Here,” Sam passed the letter to Susie who read it over once and laughed shortly. “What?”

“This isn't Eileen’s writing. First, it's much too nice, she writes like she's a doctor giving a prescription to Picasso. Second, she never ever ever uses the term girly unless she's making fun of the girls that go to music festivals with flower crowns and tops short enough to be illegal in the Bible Belt. Thirdly, she knows better that when she's being tapped that she gets a burner phone and calls us on it. She wouldn't flee without telling us. Or you guys for that matter.”

“Wait, how come she's never mentioned you guys before?” Dean asked. 

“You know, I was wondering the same damn thing.” Dianna sighed. “She never shuts up about you two, and after the time Susie here stitched her back up in Tucson, I thought we'd at least get a name drop around you two. But I guess she's too busy flirting with Sam to remember us.” 

“What?” Sam’s cheeks started to turn pink from the back seat of the cab, suddenly aware of how little space there really was back there. 

“Oh, wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. Wow! Sam. Seriously? She likes you. Like, seriously liiiiiikes you. Like a lot. Like, every time we video chat with her she turns red when we mention you. Like a tomato.” Dianna grinned at him from the rear view mirror. Dean turned around in his seat to join in the conversation. 

“Honestly,” Susie put a hand on his shoulder a confidently said, “bro, she's been waiting for you to ask her out for months. She was going to do it the last time she saw you but then the whole shooting a human messed that up. You should ask her out after we get her.”

“See! That's what I've been telling him!” Dean piped up. “I told you Sam! She's sweet on you, you're sweet on her, make it happen!” 

“Uh… uuuuuhhhhh….. I don't want to starry something if she's not ready. She's been through a lot.” Sam rubbed the back of his neck trying to act like his face wasn't in full blush as he turned to face the window. He tried focusing on the car next to them on the highway, but Susie kept poking his shoulder until he looked back at her. 

“There's always going to be a lot happening. Dianna went to war, actual war and I went through every day of my life for two and half years waiting for a phone call saying she wasn't coming back. When our friend Lynette almost died on a hunt and fell into a coma, Dianna and I thought she'd never wake up. I used to be married.”

“What?” Sam gaped at her, finally noticing the small silver band on her left hand. 

“Yeah. His name was Nathan. He became a hunter after we saved his brother from a wendigo. We were married for five years. He was the love of my life and he died of cancer. Of all things, Cancer! But he told me that even though things stop for one person, the rest of the world is still moving around them. Nathan was in no condition to date me and I just scattered my mom’s ashes in an Irish coastal town I can't pronounce but we realized there would never be a perfect time to be together. You just need ten second of courage, of insane courage and go for it.” 

Sam smiled at her and held her hands in his fastly. The memory of her dead husband still seemed fresh and even though Jess hadn't been his wife, even though she'd been dead for over twelve years, he still knew what that loss feels like. Nathan didn't want Susie to hold onto something that was gone, and Sam hoped Jess felt the same. 

 

\------------------------------------------

 

Eileen pressed her hand against every inch of the cavern walls around her as she walked carefully with the candle. There was no way out, not even a single crack and she was starting to think she'd die down here. She tried at the bars again but they were embedded deep in the stone and the door was locked with three separate locks at varying heights. She kept calling to Laoghaire and the little old woman but neither of them showed. She was just about to throw the table at the cell when she realized that the bars were rusty and the flakes came off in her hand every time she touched them. 

Kicking the table against the cavern wall, a chunk of it shattered, and the entire thing fell over. She broke off a leg by kicking at it several times, dragged the rest of the table to lean against the door, and set the rickety thing on fire. 

 

\------------------------------------

Luckily for them, the impala stood just where they left it, and after Sam and Dean jumped into their beloved car, they all zipped down towards Susie's first hunch. Selkies needed water, preferably salty, but not necessary to survival. By the time they got there, it was just opening for business so the boys went in first to check it out, only to come up empty handed. Their second choice was a provincial park just twelve miles away and proved to be a small and cheesy tourist trap. By the time they reached the third place, SAN was ready to punch the snarky parks service employee who “welcomed” them at the front gate with a sneer and a dirty look. 

Susie pulled her gun from its holster and attached a clip to it and then the other side of the clip to her belt. “Uh, what's that?” Sam asked. 

“Oh! So we read a couple Supernatural message boards for kicks once, and someone lamented on and on about how the Win- how hunters always get their weapon knocked out of their hands in a fight and bungee cords would be a wise solution, so we tried that. It didn't work. So Dianna made us these!” Susie demonstrated by pulling her gun up above her head, a thing long cable coming out of the clip as it kept the gun tethered to her hip. As she let go, the gun zipped back into its place at her side like a tape measure being released from its hold. 

“Woah.” Sam was pretty impressed. “Can, can I have one of those?” He whispered. 

The four of them made their way down to the beach, pretending very convincingly to be two couples ready for a joint picnic by the water. A few hundred feet from the main beach area was a cliff overhanging the water, a series of signs around it labelling the area to be off limits and dangerous. “Bingo.” Dean hummed, arm intertwined with Dianna’s. She pretended to laugh at a joke he hadn't said, dragging him playfully across to the off limits area, catching the attention of a park employee. 

“Hey you can't go there!” 

“Okay, so there's an entrance over there, where the cliff hangs over the water, but there's also an entrance over here, if we get past the trees and circle around back, there's a small crack in the rock that should get us there.” Susie ditched the picnic basket and the two of them sneak past the park employee having a row with Dean and Dianna undetected. 

After about five minutes of jogging around the woods to the back of the bluff, they see a break in the trees and a giant rocky hill loomed above them, dark and damp. Susie reached for his hand as she gently moved her foothold from one boulder to the next, Sam behind her followed her steps. Once they reached the last and smallest rock, they saw the tight crack going all the way up to the top, getting narrower as it hit a tree. The base of the opening looked big enough for Sam to squeeze in if he could crawl but neither of them wanted to think about what would happen if he got stuck.

Pulling the headlamps from his pocket, Sam turned on his and handed her one as well. “Here goes!” Susie really prayed she sounded hopeful as she squeezed herself through the crack. She felt her knees scrape against the jagged rock and hoped she would be able to get out of this one with both her and her jeans intact just this once. As she broke free on the other side, she saw the overhang of the cliff not twenty feet from her, water lapping onto the cavern strongly. She flashed her lamp around the rest of the cavern, seeing no one and nothing and signalled Sam to come in with a whistle. It took him almost twice as long to get through, and when he did, his hands were bloody from nicks on the rocks. 

They followed the side of the rock from the right, slowly moving towards the back of the rock, around a small jutt of a boulder to find a passageway down. The further down they went, the wider the passage became. So much so that Susie and Sam walked comfortably side by side down the rocky terrain. After about twenty minutes, Sam saw something. 

“Look, is that… light?” A faint orange glow to the right appeared in front of them and they hurried down towards it. When they turned right, they saw an almost perfectly carved out corridor, and an orange flickers glow coming from the end of it. The two of them jogged as best as they could, slipping every few steps on the wet stone. There, at the end and to the left was a cell, and there was a giant fire. Beyond the fire, a small old women lay dead, and in the middle of the cell, another selkie in the form of a woman was fighting Eileen. 

Sam tried kicking at the cell but his leg only ended up colliding with hot bars and left his foot feeling pain. 

“Quick! Lift me up!” Susie held her hands up to him and he obliged, taking her by her legs and lifting her as high up as he could. She reached into her bra to get something and started to pick at the lock closest to the ceiling. After a few moments of jostling, it unlocked with a clang. Then she worked on the lock about a foot down. It took unlocked quickly. Sam let her down and Susie lay down on the rock to get to the last lock on the door. The bars were starting to get very hot and she was having trouble with getting to this one without getting blisters. 

Sam looked everywhere for a source of water, anything that could put the fire out, but all he could find was Eileen trying to beat the living hell out of the selkie in front of her. He tried to get her attention, but Eileen was so focused on getting the selkie dead she had no idea anyone else was around. It seemed hopeless as they couldn't touch the bars without burning but Sam just took his layers off, wrapped them around his hands and laid down on the rock, taking the lock pick from Susie and getting the last lock open himself. 

As the bars opened, the table fell forward towards them and both hunters jumped to the side, ash and smoke billowing up towards them. Finally, it was enough to make Eileen turn around and see them. She smiled and laughed gleefully. They came! But it was just the distraction the selkie needed to knock Eileen on her ass. 

“You humans are always so much better than us! You always rub it in our faces! We fall in love with you and we change just to get you to notice us! And then what? We show our true colour and we get burned! Well not today! No more Selkies will die ever again.” 

A bullet smacks Laoghaire right in the side of her head and she goes down like a sack of potatoes on top of Eileen. “Help!” She managed weakly. 

Sam and Susie try to smother most of the flames from the table and move to get the dead selkie off her. Susie grabbed for Eileen’s pant leg and pulled it up to show Sam her embarrassing tattoo, laughing with tears in her eyes. “What-” she's cut off by a tight embrace from both of them, and decides it's not worth it right now. 

They manage to climb out of the cavern carefully and barely squeeze out of the crack before Sam gathers Eileen up in a hug again. He mumbles something in her hair so she pushes him back gently so she can read his lips. 

“I thought you were dead.” 

“The selkie alluded to that. She said the men of letters were hunting me and she sent one of her minions to pretend to be me. I guess the minion got killed?” 

'Yes' Sam signed. <>

“At the bunker?” She asked, signing the word for bunker twice so he could understand. 

“No,” Susie joined in, signing far better than Sam. “The bunker isn't safe. We'll go back to home base. Lynn just finished moving everything in two weeks ago. It's not traceable and it has a panic room.” 

Sam held his hand out for Eileen as they crossed the boulders and if they didn't let go until they get back to the cars, no one bothered to say anything. 

 

\--------------------------------

 

It takes them five days to drive to the safe house. They have to get onto a ferry at the American-Canadian border but apparently the Davis sisters knew the government officials well enough that they didn't bother looking too closely at the Winchester’s fake passports. Or Eileen's. 

Once they get there, they realize ‘there’ is an old looking farmhouse, tall and complete with a red barn out back. A woman with medium length brown hair stood at the front door, a pair of slacks and a white button down shirt beneath a ridiculously frilly apron. As they pull up, Dianna slides out the driver’s side door and sprints up the stairs two at a time to collide with the woman who is most definitely Lynn from the pictures. She gathers Lynn up into a hug and spins her around once. Lynn's laugh is quite, and she holds Dianna’s face in her hands as if she were the most precious thing. 

Dean can't look directly at them, especially once he realizes that they're whispering “I love you” to one another over and over again. 

“So…. Lynn, huh?” He asked Susie as she climbs out of the cab of the pickup, Sam and Eileen far too absorbed in their own wandering of the farm. 

“Yeah. We met her on a hunt just after we met Eileen. Believe it or not, she used to be one of 23 wives in an LDS church. One of the wives died giving birth and came back to haunt the rest.” 

“What? No! You're just making shit up now Sue.” 

"No, I swear! We dropped her off at a convent but she needed up hunting alone when we found her a year later. Lynn begged us to take her with us and Dianna didn't have the heart to say no.It took them four years before they realized they loved each other. They thought they were being discreet, but there's only so many suggested eye communication and insisting they were straight that one could take. When Lynn went into a coma, Dianna never left her side. Five weeks. She woke up and they couldn't keep their hands off each other since.”

“Huh.” Dean stood there, watching the two women talk about something as they walked through the front door. Susie ushered Dean to follow and as he saw the pictures on the walls and the medal of valour next to Dianna's army portrait he felt a pang in his chest. He looked at his hands and wondered if he had gone to war instead of fighting monsters, how would his life turn out? Sammy went to law school and Dean could have left her father too. There was so much about that night that Dean regretted but he couldn't go back. 

“Hey,” a light voice beside him shook him out of his thoughts, Lynn standing in front of him with a mug of cocoa. “It's nice to meet you Dean, I'm Lynn. You're welcome to stay here for as long as you need. I have a room upstairs for you, and I don't know if Di mentioned, but I'm actually a therapist. So, if you ever need to talk, my office is the first door before the stairs.” Lynn pointed to the big oak door with a quirky sign hanging from it just as ridiculous as the one in the trailer. In big pink letters it said “all our visitors bring happiness; some by coming, others by going”. He smiled and nodded as she gently patted his hands. 

“She likes signs.” Sue said as she past him, pointing to one above the door that had a picture of a cat and the words “smell ya later!” painted underneath. 

 

\------------------------------------

 

After dinner Lynn and Dianna headed upstairs first - to make out, Dean had expected - so the rest of them decided to play a few hands of poker to pass the time. After about an hour, Susie couldn't stifle her yawns anymore and called it a night. Dean followed suit just ten minutes later. Sam stared at his brother’s retreating back unsure whether this was the moment he was waiting for or not. It had been five long days since they pulled her from the cavern. Two weeks since they thought she was dead, lying prone on the slab in the morgue. They had a second chance and he was nervous not to blow it. He fiddled with the cards, trying to shuffle them when a hand on his chin sent them flying across the kitchen floor.

He turned to look at her, hope in his eyes matching the hope in hers. “Ready for bed?” She asked. 

“Uhhh… yes?” He signed. She huffed at him with a smile, half of a laugh of sorts. She took her hand off his chin and slipped it into his big one. He followed her up the stairs, flicking one light after another as they went. The stairs creaked a little as they went up, but everyone seemed to be genuinely asleep if the snores were any indication, so Sam wasn't too worried. They reached the only open door on the right to find a cosy room with a king size bed, two end tables, two lamps and a couple of paintings. Dean and Susie had most likely put their bags in here as Eileen lent down to grab a pair of pyjamas from her duffle. Sam turned away as she undressed, giving her some privacy. She chuckled at that, her half huffed laugher. Sam took his own sleepwear and went to the bathroom to change, gripping the sink to breathe heavily a few times trying to calm himself down. 

When he got back, Eileen was already in bed, waiting for him. As he closed the door behind him she held her arms up, open to him. He settled down next to her, and they lay faces next to each other, laying on their sides. 

'Will you stay?' he signed. 

'On one condition' 

'What is it?'

'Go on a date with me. Dinner?' she signed back, slowly so Sam could understand all of it. 

He nodded his head slowly in agreement, signing 'yes' over and over again. 

She took her hand, extending her fingers, fingertips touching the corner of her mouth and dragged it over to her cheek in a sign Sam had hoped to see for a long time. And as he leaned in, he thanked whatever force of nature decided to give them the Davis’ and to help her Eileen back. And then all he could think about was how soft her lips felt and how warm her hands were as her fingers ran through his hair. 

They broke apart after a moment, smiling at each other and Sam repeated the sign. 

'Kiss me'

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This is the first fix I've written in ten years so I'd appreciate any and all feedback. This was loosely based on a fever dream I had where Dean and Sam met the alternate universe female versions of themselves after I had too much wine on my birthday, so here. Also, I thought a shamrock would be the ultimate "white girl wasted" tattoo to get at Mardi Gras. And my ASL is rusty


End file.
